I Wish I Was At The MAC...

Each week, usually on Mondays, I will post about events happening at the MAC that week I would go to, if I didn't have a job that requires me to work weekend evenings.

Until I become wittier, this post's title will be "I Wish I Was At The MAC..."

In this week's installment, our blogging hero's bellydancing watching dreams are dashed by the evil pizza delivery job.

That's right, bellydancing.

This Sunday from 7:30-9:30pm, beautiful, confident women dressed in rich, bright fabric, with heads and necks covered in jewels will dance to energetic, capturing music. Need I say more?

Seriously, while writing out the reasons I want to go to this event, I couldn't get passed: It's so cool!!!

It seems self-explanatory. What else is there to say beyond bellydancing?

The word conjures up energetic music that gets under your skin and makes you want to move your hips, arms, and feet in ways your brain cannot comprehend.

But, if you really need more convincing, just ask Shakira's hips because they don't lie. And if that wasn't enough, keep reading.

After watching the Shakira video, I'm going to assume you like bellydancing or any sort of dancing that  involves the hips and or torso making serpentine movements and move onto what makes this event especially special.

Not only is this a chance to watch world renowned professional dancers get their groove on, but also members of our local bellydancing community. I'm not sure who those people are, but it fills my heart with community love to imagine Columbus dancers performing in Club Bellydance's show and loved ones watching their friend/family-member/significant-other doing their thing on stage.

Based on the event page for the show, Club Bellydance will bring new, experimental dance moves and choreography to the Bronwynn Theatre. Their performance on Sunday could be completely unique to the MAC or a first look at routines no one else has seen.

They describe this tour as different from their larger productions, with a move towards an "intimate" "club style setting." As engaging as I'm sure their larger shows are, I imagine this performance to be even more hypnotizing and thrilling than if I were to see a larger show from the balcony of a theatre. Also, the music will be even more likely to make you want to get up and get down!

There you have it, an awesome show I'm incredibly excited for, but cannot attend.

 If you'd like to buy tickets in advance, click here and order them through the MAC's website.

After attending the show please leave a comment telling me your favorite part, or post pictures, videos, and more thoughts on the MAC's Facebook.

Finally for those of you still not convenced, watch this video.

 

Things Could Get Weird

 In my first official meeting with Jon Cook to become an intern here, he explained what the MAC is and what is done here. Amid the children’s painting classes, local band concerts, and BalletMet taught tap, he mentioned Art Off the Square, an arts administration internship the MAC offers.

When he told me that they give a small group of high-schoolers a budget to create their own programming once a month, I was sold on this place. Maybe I’ve spent too much of my life on Facebook, but I’ve never heard of an internship like this and thought it was way cool it existed.

Art Off the Square is my favorite program to tell my friends, family, and fellow bus riders about, when they ask me about my internship. “I intern at an arts center that is totally engaging our youth!” (Is 22 old enough to start using the phrase “our youth”?)

However, I had yet to attend any of their programs. Fearing I’d start to look like one of those people who always wear band t-shirts for bands they’ve only heard on the radio, I decided the next third Sunday of the month I had free, I would go.

That was last Sunday.

Three of the five interns hosted a laid-back, and at points musical, theatre improv group. I was fifteen minutes late, (I had no idea where they were meeting, maybe something to advertise on the website AOS peeps.) but walking in, I found a decent sized group, maybe twenty, of high school, middle school, elementary school students, and even some parents, in the basement dance studio.

Let me just say, I’m incredibly bad at improv. I am a goofy, fun-loving person, but acting scares me. Too much pressure to be funny, or believable, and yet--I did enjoy myself. Some of the early games reminded me of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" (For the record, one of the interns had never heard of Whose Line, I almost freaked out.) In the game two people read from the page of a play and the other person was suppose to respond to it, in their situation in a way that made sense. That's not at all what happened, but it was interesting to watch none-the-less. 

After that, we played a handful of games similar to charades and then apparently an Improv staple, “Honey, I Love You.” In which one person has to walk up to someone and make them laugh or smile by asking the question “Honey do you love me?”

The most successful “Honeys” were the ones willing to cut loose, or who knew their friends really well. One of the girls sang pop songs off key to get the person to crack a smile. Some of the participants were just really good at not smiling, which was a double-edged sword because if they didn’t make you smile, you had to walk around trying to make someone laugh.

After that game they played a similar one, where everyone but one person lies on the ground with their eyes open, pretending to be dead, while one person tries to make them smile or laugh and once someone laughs they’re no longer dead and help make other “dead people” laugh. The event kind of dismantled into groups of friends singing pop songs (I call them “pop songs” because I didn’t recognize some of them. So yes, 22 is old enough to start saying “our youth.”)

Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, myself included. Afterwards I talked to Delany and Angie, two of the interns that set up the event, they said they were happy with it.  When I asked them why they chose this event and what they hoped participates would get out of it, Delany replied, “I just like being completely weird and hoped people would break out of their shell and have fun.” Angie explained they thought it would be a fun, laid-back way to get their friends involved with Art Off the Square and it was their best turn out yet. 

They both agreed this is an event they’ll host again. Next time I’ll commit to being a little weirder. 

Welcome to the Peggy R. McConnell Arts Center’s Blog

Hello there. Welcome to the MAC’s maiden voyage into the blogging frontier. You might roll your eyes at my word choice, but creating this blog for the MAC makes me feel like an enthused explorer a la Lewis & Clark, discovering new ways to communicate, while also experiencing the world of blogging from the canoe rather than the riverside (did I take the Lewis & Clark analogy too far?) So who is this overly excited person blabbering her rudimentary knowledge of Lewis & Clark instead of describing the MAC or its blog?

My name is Jordan McFall and I’m currently a writing intern at the MAC. In my time here I’ve worked on press releases, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, and whatever words Executive Director, Jon Cook asks me to whip up. I’m a budding writer and I look forward to sharing my experiences and enthusiasm for the MAC and everything it does with you.

If you didn’t find this blog through our Facebook, Twitter, or maybe even our website, I’m impressed and curious as to how you found it, and you’re probably wondering what this “MAC” place is and if it has anything to do with apple products. (It doesn’t.)

The MAC is the McConnell Arts Center of Worthington, Ohio, a community arts center that provides the local community with opportunities to interact with art in a number of ways. The building, once a decrepit, semi-abandoned high school, was lovingly restored in 2009 to the beautiful, sophisticated, and modern home of the arts it is today.

Visitors can view local artists’ exhibits in the main gallery, take a painting class in the painting and drawing classroom upstairs, learn tap in the basement dance studio, bring their children to a stop motion class in the digital media room, or watch a film, musical performance, or play in the Bronwynn theatre. There are so many programs to participate in and always something to experience here.

The icing on this delicious artisan cake is that 90% of what fills this space comes from the local community. The instructors, art exhibits, and musical artists all live within the Columbus area or have connections to Worthington. And when we bring in someone from outside the community, you know they’re stellar at whatever they do.

So what is this blog?

This blog is one big experiment.

I’m not afraid to admit that because the MAC is an innovative, unique, artistic, ballsy place and as an intern here, I’ve decided to take a risk too. In the past three years, the MAC has received strong patronage from its local community, mostly made up of families, both just starting and well established ones as well as older, possibly retired men and women.

We love our community and everyone who supports us, but the twenty-somethings living in Clintonville and closer to OSU’s campus, as well as high schoolers in the area who either don’t know we exist, or aren’t aware of the many amazing events and programs we have, are missing out.

I’m hoping this blog, coupled with a different approach to our social media outlets will help the MAC reach out to these audiences. If this audience is anything like this twenty-two year old, recent college grad, they’ll find the MAC as inspiring, and thrilling as I do.

Also, in my research in how a blog such as this one should look, I found other community art centers and their blogs. I would love for this blog to become a way to interact with these centers and discuss what programs and exhibits they host, what challenges they face as well as share our experiences with them.

I want to learn more about what community art centers in America are doing and share with them what we’re doing because it’s all pretty cool, in my opinion. However, that’s a pipe dream we’ll get to farther down the road.

Right now this is blog is a way to interact with an audience we seemingly don’t have much communication with. 

Keep an eye on this page because who knows what this blog will grow into.